What Your Creative Team Wishes You Knew Before Your Next Launch

Show notes for Season 1 · Episode 4 of Product Marketing for You with Dmitry Shamis.

I've tossed a lot of creative briefs over the fence in my career. Hand it off, hope for the best, see what comes back three weeks later. Some were great. Most were... not great. And I always blamed the creative team.

Then I met Dmitry. He's a brand and creative leader who's run creative at HubSpot and now runs OhSnap!, a creative agency. And the first thing he told me was: "The problem isn't us. It's how you're bringing us in."

Turns out, every misaligned creative project I'd ever had was my fault—not because I was a bad PMM, but because I was treating creative like a service vendor instead of a launch partner. I'd lock in messaging, finalize positioning, build the entire go-to-market plan, then hand it to creative and expect magic.

So I asked Dmitry to pull back the curtain on what PMMs get wrong—and how to fix it before the next launch suffers for it.

What's the relationship between PMM and creative on a product launch?

According to Dmitry, the traditional model is broken. Most PMMs do marketing things, creative does creative things, and when the marketing plan is figured out, you just toss it over the fence so creative can make it look good. But that's the opposite of how great launches work. The PMM and creative leader need to be partners from the beginning—because it takes time to do good work, and the sooner creative is involved in ideation and concepting, the stronger the entire launch becomes. Your credibility as a PMM depends on bringing creative in early enough that they can actually influence the strategy, not just execute against it.

Here's how Dmitry recommends working with your creative team on product launches

• Step 1: Bring creative in as early as possible — Not after strategy is locked. Before. At the beginning of ideation. This gives the creative partner time to understand context and start concepting with you, not after the fact. Even if there's no active work yet, knowing something big is coming lets them start thinking.
• Step 2: Have the right first conversation — The intake is everything. Dmitry wants to know: Why does this product exist? Why are we launching it, why now? Who is it for? What pain points does it solve? What outcomes should it bring? This isn't busywork—it's the foundation for creative solutions that actually bring your messaging and positioning to life.
• Step 3: Build a clear creative brief — Your brief needs: clear positioning, objectives and success metrics, context about the launch scope, tone and voice guidelines, and creative direction (without being overly prescriptive). Give creative guardrails, not a coloring book. The brief is your chance to align everyone before creative starts working.
• Step 4: Respect the creative process and build it into your timeline — Every team has their own process with SLAs, feedback rounds, and ways of working. Dmitry calls surprise requests "torpedoes"—they blow up timelines. Build the creative process into your launch plan from the start. Don't fight it. The sooner you acknowledge it, the sooner you can discuss trade-offs (like multi-phase launches instead of one impossible deadline).
• Step 5: Apply the three rules for working with creative partners — (1) Trust them and treat them like partners, not service providers—they want the launch to succeed too. (2) Bring them in early and keep them looped on everything. (3) Don't be afraid to speak up and push back—there should be healthy tension. Respect their expertise, but you have expertise too.

Resources from this Episode

• Connect with Dmitry: OhSnap! Agency

And a special shout out to this season's sponsor, PMM Camp — where product marketers build leadership range so they can move beyond execution to influence decisions, shape strategy, and build a trusted team.